Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Overview of this book

Bugs are a time consuming burden during software development. Django's built-in test framework and debugging support help lessen this burden. This book will teach you quick and efficient techniques for using Django and Python tools to eradicate bugs and ensure your Django application works correctly. This book will walk you step by step through development of a complete sample Django application. You will learn how best to test and debug models, views, URL configuration, templates, and template tags. This book will help you integrate with and make use of the rich external environment of test and debugging tools for Python and Django applications. The book starts with a basic overview of testing. It will highlight areas to look out for while testing. You will learn about different kinds of tests available, and the pros and cons of each, and also details of test extensions provided by Django that simplify the task of testing Django applications. You will see an illustration of how external tools that provide even more sophisticated testing features can be integrated into Django's framework. On the debugging front, the book illustrates how to interpret the extensive debugging information provided by Django's debug error pages, and how to utilize logging and other external tools to learn what code is doing.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Chapter 5. Filling in the Blanks: Integrating Django and Other Test Tools

Previous chapters have discussed the built-in application test support that comes with Django 1.1. We first learned how to use doctests to test the building blocks of our application, and then covered the basics of unit tests. In addition, we saw how functions provided by django.test.TestCase and django.test.Client aid in testing Django applications. Through examples, we learned how to use these functions to test more complete pieces of our application, such as the contents of pages it serves and its form handling behavior.

Django alone, however, does not provide everything one might want for test support. Django is, after all, a web application framework, not a test framework. It doesn't, for example, provide any test coverage information, which is essential for developing comprehensive test suites, nor does it provide any support for testing client-side behavior, since Django is purely a server-side framework. Other...